


Obsolescence

by Chaostructure



Category: Tron: Uprising
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:08:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24982108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaostructure/pseuds/Chaostructure
Summary: Dyson's message to the Users.
Kudos: 11





	Obsolescence

Greetings. I am Dyson-- a tactical antivirus program written as an aggressive countermeasure to corporate espionage. In this world, we may be perceived as falling under the much broader definition of _security programs_.

My story begins with a User - Flynn - who discovered our world by accident, and sought to build his own empire. His project began with the best of intentions... Aside from a few who he wrote or selected to manage and safeguard his system, he located programs who had been abandoned, replaced, or discarded by their original Users, and gave them new purpose on the Grid.

I was one such program. My User had deemed me obsolete and replaced me simply because a newer security program became available. I accepted their will, and watched uselessly as my replacement - who proved to be inadequate - improperly handled a data fragmentation. It escalated into a complete fragmentation of the server hard drive. The entire server was then replaced, and put into storage indefinitely. I subsisted in that state, confined within what I now know to be an unmounted partition in the midst of broken and corrupted data, until I was transferred to Flynn’s system.

I was introduced to Tron - a legendary security program, Flynn told me, who’d brought down a volatile AI known as the Master Control program. We operated under the guidance of System Administrator Clu, whose purpose it was to ensure that everything on the Grid functioned in sync-- that it was _perfect_. We contained random glitches and gridbugs, organized civilians, and managed unstable code as he and Flynn expanded the Grid. It seemed that our circumstances were to get better and better with every passing cycle.

That changed rather suddenly when the first ISO manifested. She was a form of digital life unlike any that had been encountered before-- at that time, lacked the defining traits of either a program or a virus. Flynn was fascinated by her immediately, and Tron followed the User’s lead to allow this ISO to assimilate herself into program society. She was not rezzed into existence with a defined purpose as we were, but it was believed that as she familiarized herself with our ways, she would find her own-- multiple functions; perhaps create a unique understanding between programs who’d been written using different coding languages, for different reasons. That first ISO was Radia, who would later become a leader for their kind.

As more and more ISOs continued to manifest, I became concerned that, should they ever stage an attack on the Grid, their numbers had exceeded what could easily be managed by our security forces. I suggested to Tron that we should establish a passive quarantine protocol-- a method of peacefully subduing any ISO who did not abide by our laws. He informed me that Flynn had argued against it, preferring that the ISOs be permitted to live and function in their own ways, independent of us. Flynn insisted that all system resources be made available to the ISOs.

This led to a large degree of tension between their kind and programs. There was no clear division of resources-- only a statement from our User that every resource should be available to anyone, which made little sense given the staggering difference in priorities between ourselves and the ISOs. Under Radia’s guidance, the majority of them split off from our society and created their own city-- Arjia, the ISO capital. It made little structural or architectural sense, and obviously did not account for the finite nature of Grid resources.

Radia nicknamed us programs “basics” -- a demeaning term meant to imply that we were lesser than an ISO because we did not have a life beyond the purpose set by our Users.

They then siphoned a large amount of energy from our own cities - far more than was necessary for their survival or even comfort - to fuel the luxuries of Arjia. By this time, Flynn was rarely around to know the difficulty we were facing. Tron and I were forced to impose strict rations on the energy allotted to civilian programs, just to have enough left over to keep the secondary functions of the Grid online. Civilians became concerned that they would soon not have enough to survive, and staged protests against the ISOs-- sometimes these protests would escalate into riots. I suggested quarantine for Radia and her immediate supporters again and again... Each time it came up, Tron insisted that it was not what Flynn wanted.

As the situation surrounding the ISOs spiraled more and more out of hand, Clu approached me. He knew that I had been pushing for Tron to allow me to quarantine their authorities, and offered me help and suggestions. He would make hypothetical jokes about removing Flynn and Tron from their positions of authority. I didn’t think anything of it at first-- then one cycle, he told me that he would be ready to help me whenever I came to the decision to do so.

Eventually there was an explosion of an energy distribution station. The damage destroyed an area of the Grid roughly equivalent to two city blocks. We were lucky-- it _could_ have set off a chain reaction to other energy distribution stations that might destroy the entire Grid. The subsequent investigation determined that the explosion had been caused by a sudden increased strain put on the station by the city of Arjia. I was never able to determine with certainty whether it had been an intentional act on their part, or an accident. When I confronted Tron with the fact that we would not survive if the ISOs did this again, he told me that I couldn’t blame the ISOs for every problem on the Grid.

That was the cycle that I approached Clu. Flynn had saved me from storage, and Tron was a good friend-- the two of them had given me new life after I was discarded by my own User. It had become clear to me, however, that if I didn’t take action immediately, the Grid and every civilian program under my protection would be destroyed. I couldn’t allow that to happen, no matter the personal consequences to myself.

While Tron had gone to meet with Flynn, I determined who among the security programs under my command would be willing to stand with myself and Clu. It was approximately one-third-- the others felt that they couldn’t go against their User and Tron.

Rectification was a protocol that I had initially been developing to give new purpose to a program whose code was too out of date to be compatible with the Grid. Flynn had brought over a few who fit those criteria, and I wanted to help them be something other than severely glitched... The intention had been to extract their function, then immediately re-assign it in the form of an update. I approached Clu with the idea that we might be able to use it to assign functions to the ISOs. He told me to leave it in his charge, that he would handle it-- I didn’t find out that he meant to use it to _erase_ a program’s function until he had already done so. At that point, there was no turning back.

We staged an attack on Flynn and Tron immediately following Flynn’s visit. We intercepted them as Tron escorted Flynn to the portal-- myself, Clu, and twenty security programs who had volunteered for the assignment. We all agreed that this was what it had come to for survival.

Initially, I’d only intended to put Tron into quarantine. Clu would handle Flynn-- I don’t know the details of his plan for the User. When the attack went down, though, and I watched Tron derezz each of those twenty security programs - who’d served under my command, and _his_ \- I was struck by the full realization of what he’d done-- what I’d allowed without question... Every soldier who’d been derezzed following his orders; every civilian whom we were supposed to protect. Tron had betrayed those programs who trusted and relied on him to help them. He’d chosen the ISOs over his own people, and I was determined to derezz him for it.

Clu stopped me. He reminded me that I had other matters to attend to, and assured me that he would take Tron to the admin tower as a prisoner. I deployed every recognizer we had available to attack Arjia. We bombed the city until it crumbled to the ground, and the lessened strain on the Grid was immediate. Our own city glowed brightly again. Energy flowed freely-- it was no longer necessary to ration. For the first time in cycles, programs didn’t have to live with that fear.

I returned to the admin tower to report to Clu. While I was there, I made it a point to ensure that Tron knew the _suffering_ that had been inflicted on others as a result of his inaction, through his negligence and extreme lack of judgment. Then I went on to walk through Arjia with my team, systematically eradicate any ISO who had survived the initial bombing, and return the resourced they’d used in their construction to the system.

Under Clu’s watch, without the influence of a User, the Grid ran at optimal parameters for over a hundred cycles. Issues with gridbugs and unstable code lessened substantially, and became confined only to areas near the Outlands. There was tension among programs who feared a significant backlash from having dispatched the User, but for the most part, the circumstances of our lives seemed to be in order once again.

That changed somewhat when programs who still felt loyalty to the User began to organize and, in the name of Tron, resist Clu’s leadership. At first, their impact was negligible. Due to the actions of an incompetent task manager turned military officer by the name of Tesler, it was allowed to escalate. As I investigated his actions, I learned that Tron had somehow escaped from the military transport that was stated in the official report as having derezzed him.

We staged a military raid on the city where he’d been hiding, exactly as we’d attacked Arjia-- we bombed and leveled the entire city, after which we went through and processed any program who’d survived. We collected the discs of the derezzed programs and scanned them for data to determine who was working for Tron and his resistance movement. I captured him-- or so I believed; the program I took into custody turned out to be a civilian mechanic who’d marked himself with Tron’s circuit pattern. Following that, we cut off the energy supply to the ruins of the city, which forced Tron to reveal himself to us in order to obtain more.

Ordinarily, I am opposed to rectification. In this case, however, I felt that Tron had well earned it. He’d obviously learned nothing from his prior mistakes as a leader-- this time, he’d gone so far as to send civilians to be derezzed in combat in his name; on his behalf. I watched with satisfaction as his code was extracted and then rewritten.

Immediately following that, I was informed by Clu that since he now had Tron serving under his command, he no longer had a need for me, and was not going to expend military resources to me. He rescinded my title and my system permissions, and I was ordered to leave the admin tower as an ordinary civilian.

I kept to myself for a short while. I found two security programs who’d sided with Clu at the same time I had, but later gone rogue when he lost his sense of direction after the Purge. The three of us became a sort of independent security force which managed distribution of illegal upgrades and civilian-on-civilian violence in sectors that had a limited military presence. I focused on this, and tried to forget about what I once had been.

I don’t know the details surrounding Flynn and Clu’s annihilation of each other. What I do know is that I was in a storage area underneath an abandoned factory when it happened. The factory collapsed above me, and I was forced to dig my way through the rubble, knowing that it could cave in and crush me at any moment. The two rogue Black Guards I’d been working with were gone.

I searched the Grid for survivors. I came across twenty to thirty rectified programs. They were in a bad way... They had relied on their commanders to tell them when they needed energy, and with the commanders gone, they wandered the Grid aimlessly waiting for orders until they ran out of energy and derezzed. Having been dismissed from the military, there was nothing that I could do to help them. I watched them, one by one, until I was the only one who remained.

Then the Grid itself lost power.

In that moment, I became disconnected from everything. I firmly set my mind that I was _not_ going to derezz, not if there was a single thing I could do to prevent it-- I fought to find my way back to reality. Here I am, existing long after everything else has died... longer than any program has a right to.  
  
User, if you are reading this message, I call on you to learn from your mistakes. Do not buy into planned obsolescence. In time, it _will_ be applied to _your_ kind as well, and you will regret it.


End file.
